Saskatchewan’s rural municipalities think their association is getting too cozy with the provincial government.
Delegates passed a resolution at the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities annual meeting instructing the organization’s board of directors to be non-partisan when advocating on behalf of its membership.
Paul Heglund, councillor for the RM of Reno, said there have been too many instances of SARM not following through with resolutions.
He accused the association of becoming too intertwined with the provincial government, like the way it administers many programs on behalf of the province.
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“No one can serve two masters, no matter what the rationalization is,” Heglund said when speaking to the resolution put forward by his RM.
“Over the last few years, directors have become partisan in their politics.”
Heglund said SARM failed to act on a resolution passed at last year’s annual convention to launch a class action lawsuit against the province for not returning federal pastureland to RMs after the program ended.
He said it is not the first time SARM has failed to properly follow through on resolutions.
“It’s good to have a smooth relationship (with the province), but we don’t want it to the point where it starts becoming partisan, that they pick and choose what they do according to how it pleases government,” Heglund said in an interview following his address to delegates.
He said the association is supposed to represent the views of its membership to the province rather than the other way around.
“They’re bowing down to the province more than they should,” said Heglund.
The issue came to a head last fall during the midterm convention when SARM’s president at the time, David Marit, announced he was seeking the Saskatchewan Party nomination in Wood River.
Heglund said Marit should have immediately stepped down from his position or the rest of the board should have forced him to resign.
Marit said he was within his rights to stay on as SARM president. The association’s constitution says directors must resign only after they win a nomination, which is what Marit did after he won.
“I did everything according to the constitution of the organization,” Marit said in an interview at the convention.
He said it is important for SARM to have a good working relationship with the province.
“It’s a lot better for the organization and the membership to be inside those doors instead of outside and not getting in,” said Marit.
“Can you ever get too close to government? I don’t think you can ever get too close as long as you’re dealing with your issues in a respectful manner.”
Marit said SARM had a problem with the class action lawsuit resolution because it was going to be time-consuming and costly.
“Our lawyers are totally tied up in liability issues. That’s what we hired our lawyers for, was to deal with liability issues against municipalities,” he said. “They’re overloaded. In fact, they’re contracting out. (They were) never intended to take on other issues.”
The board also didn’t think it was fair that the majority of the RMs that didn’t have any federal pastures should be funding a lawsuit for the minority that did.
“I’m not saying their issue isn’t serious. It is serious. It’s important to them. But I think there was a better way to deal with it than (the lawsuit),” said Marit.
He said SARM met with the seven municipalities that were pushing for the lawsuit, and six of them agreed they would handle it on their own without dragging SARM into the issue. Marit believed the case had been resolved until it resurfaced at this year’s convention.
Current SARM president Ray Orb said the board of directors isn’t in bed with the province.
“We don’t have any ties to the provincial government and we don’t agree with everything that the province does,” he said.
“But if the RMs perceive that we are too close, then we have to correct the way that we’re perceived by municipalities. Simple as that.”
sean.pratt@producer.com
